Anything You Can Do
by PantyDragon
Summary: A bit of non-crack, non-slash humor, focusing on the "domestic" relationship between John and Sherlock and some of the facepalm-type moments they have together. Rated T so I can freely employ some Sweary!John and maybe some SexuallyOblivious!Sherlock
1. Jam Jars, Trivia, Ties, and Cooking

John was a patient man. He was no saint, certainly, he had his moments, but to survive Sherlock Holmes and emerge with any measure of sanity required an exceptional level of emotional stability. Even so, it got to him sometimes, it would get to anyone, the experimenting and the flippancy and the loud, late nights, but John had started a little game with himself to make things blow over a bit more easily.

He had begun keeping a running tally of all the things that he could do better than Sherlock could.

When the two had first met, John would have said there was nothing that Sherlock couldn't do if he put his mind to it, but he knew better now. He had seen the man behind the pompousness and the bluster and John, better than anyone, knew that Sherlock was in fact a mere mortal like the rest of us. He was sure. He had a _list_ to prove it, and every time he could add an entry to that list, he would smile triumphantly and glance at Sherlock fondly and think of how best to use the realisation against his flatmate the next time he was being particularly annoying.

_Open a jar. _

Sherlock could not open a jar to save his life. John had an easy enough time of it, he met with the occasional toughie, but he had never encountered a lid that had bested him in the long run. Not so with Sherlock. Maybe it was the length of those pale fingers, maybe it was poor circulation, maybe it was the ever-present catalogue of burns and abrasions, but the common jam jar lid was one of Sherlock's most hated enemies. He had tried hand towels, hot water, even a square of textured latex rubber he had cut specifically for that purpose (John had never asked where the latex had come from) but if he could open one in ten of the jars and bottles he encountered, it was lucky. Never once had he asked John for help of course, he would never have dreamed of it, instead his strategy was simply this: 1) acquire jar 2) do battle with jar 3) if unsuccessful, become increasingly violent with jar 4) if still unsuccessful, replace jar in cabinet and henceforth ignore forever.

Thus, for the last few months, without so much as a word about it to the incorrigible Sherlock, John had taken to methodically removing any new jars of non-perishables from the grocery bag before putting them away, popping the lids open, then replacing them, tightly enough to keep the contents from spoiling, but not air-seal tightly, so that his flatmate would be able to open them. Now, every time he saw Sherlock munching pensively on toast covered in blackberry jam, he would smile fondly to himself and think _Score: one for John Watson today_.

_Play trivia games._

You wouldn't think it, would you? That big brain of his, that speed of cognition, all that seemingly random knowledge, but Sherlock was really completely awful at the sort of things trivia games seemed to consider relevant. Once, in a fit of boredom, he had succumbed to John's pestering and agreed to play Trivial Pursuit ("It has 'trivial' right in the name, John. What is the point? Do you really enjoy this? This is such a waste of time.") and had been soundly and staggeringly beaten. He had stopped trying and begun flicking cards across the room after only about three questions ("Who in their right mind would care which Pope standardized the modern calendar?" "The square mileage of China is completely irrelevant to my life." "_The Solar System_ is a category? An ENTIRE category?") but John had flipped through a few cards just to rub it in the detective's face a bit, and had discovered that the only questions Sherlock could answer were ones related to anatomy, machinery, or historical murders. After a quarter hour of this, and once Sherlock had a substantial strop on, John put the game away and suggested chess instead. At chess Sherlock had beaten him in less than forty seconds, and the problem of boredom was quickly weighing heavily on both of them once again.

_Tie a tie._

Admittedly, this seemed to be more a refusal to learn than an actual inability. John didn't understand why, but in spite of his otherwise very snappy fashion sense, he seemed to have some fierce ideological opposition to ties of any sort. Since they had moved in at 221B, Sherlock had been forced to wear a tie on three occasions (two disguises for cases, and one charity dinner that Mycroft had somehow tricked him into attending, along with John who was definitely not his date, as he had insisted to at least fifteen people that night). Each time, Sherlock had accomplished the necessary application of formalwear by approaching John sourly and wordlessly holding the strip of printed silk inches from his face until the good doctor caught on.

"Let me teach you how," he had offered, struggling to get the length right as he reached with considerable difficulty around Sherlock's shoulders. He could only tie a tie from behind, he had only ever needed to do it on himself until now, so if he tired to tie it as he stared at it straight on it came out all wonky.

"Don't bother; it's not as if I'll ever need to do this again." Yet even by the third time, John continued to irritably insist and Sherlock continued to adamantly refuse, and both of them knew that they would never get anywhere with the matter. John eventually resigned himself to the fact that he would likely be tying Sherlock's ties at least a few times a year for the rest of their cohabitation (perhaps for the rest of their lives, perhaps the two were interchangeable), and he found that surprisingly, he was okay with that.

_Cook literally anything at all._

John had begun to suspect long ago that his reptilian tendency to eat only once every few days was, in reality, simply an adaptive reaction to the fact that he could hardly boil water without burning it. ("Toast, Sherlock? Seriously? It's toast, you don't even have to do anything to it, you put it in the toaster. It's a machine that makes toast for you, novel, isn't it? Don't look at me like that; just put the damn bread in the toaster. See, that was easy...Christ! Sherlock, it was only turned to 3, how did you set it on fire?") Yes, for the record, one _can_ in fact burn water, and Sherlock had done it just last week.

John figured that after a few years living on his own, and in true Sherlock fashion, he must have decided that rather than learning to cook, he would simply learn to not eat. It didn't make sense (of course it didn't) especially considering how carefully the man could handle pipettes and solutions and Bunsen burners and all other forms of heating and measurement, but that was Sherlock for you: uncanny. John was no chef himself, but he could manage a few dishes without catastrophic results, and Sherlock did not seem to particularly care if things were a bit overdone or under-seasoned or generally bachelor-y, so John just went right on being okay at cooking, and Sherlock went right on being God-awful at it.

This is how it happened that at 221B, the boys didn't eat anything that was not either cooked with the stumbling care of John Watson or delivered to them in premade form.

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><p>This is something I began out of boredom and couldn't help but find sort of cute. I'll probably add more chapters if I get bored again (which I will) or come up with a few more clever or silly things that John can best Sherlock at. Any and all suggestions are welcome and will be considered.<p> 


	2. Driving, Children, and Dancing

__I bring you, ladies and gentlemen, the second installment of John Watson's list of "things that he can do better than Sherlock can," which he has composed out of both love and spite, both affection and irritation, because with Sherlock Holmes, many people have the latter without the former, but only John has both.

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><p><em>Drive a car.<em>

Sherlock had never in his life – not once – ever had to drive a car. Mycroft had revealed this to him after insisting (futilely) that they both come back to the Holmes household for Christmas dinner, because "mummy will be so pleased that you've found a little playmate." There had followed a few very irritable quips (something about Mycroft finding more cake) and an assertion that taking a train at Christmastime was a legitimately terrible idea. Let's be honest, this was an excuse, not a reason, so when Mycroft tried other angles, even going so far as to offer to send someone to physically pick the two of them up and drive them there, Sherlock snapped back with increasingly less reasonable and more insulting reasons why that would be out of the question.

In an attempt to derail the Holmes family crisis unfolding in their sitting room, John had offered cheerfully. "Oh, why not, Sherlock? The train will be crowded, yeah, but we could hire a car and do the road trip thing, it's only a few hours, we can take turns."

Mycroft had chuckled and John had glanced uncomfortably between them, wondering what exactly he had said that was so funny. Mycroft had then explained that the younger Holmes brother had never "bothered himself with" learning to drive, and Sherlock had snapped that Mycroft had never "bothered himself with" ordering a salad.

They had spent Christmas at 221B, but John had been adamant about all the little things like lights and tinsel and crackers. Out of spite he had likewise insisted that Sherlock wear the one pink paper crown, and to his surprise, Sherlock had complied with very few protests. John was sure he had even caught him smiling.

_Children._

Yes, I know what you're thinking. How can someone be "better at children"? That's how Sherlock himself had phrased it, because in his terms: children are a thing, and they must occasionally be dealt with, even by the world's only consulting detective, who happens to hate children nearly as much as they hate him. Hate is a strong word - maybe not _hate_ - but well, John supposed that in a way, Sherlock was _afraid_ of them, because he simply did not know how to deal with a very small, very needy, very direct little human being whose priorities were very different from his own.

John loved kids. He went back and forth about whether he actually wanted ones of his own at any point (and it occasionally occurred to him that he had bloody well better decide soon), but he was definitely – as Sherlock would have said - "good at children." So when it happened that an especially animated three-year-old boy was their only witness in a case involving the disappearance of the last will and testament of a phenomenally rich, phenomenally corrupt (and now phenomenally dead) lawyer, Sherlock had been entirely at a loss.

"No, I do not want to play with your dinosaur, just tell me where your grandfather kept his personal documents and…please stop that. What are you doing? That is unsanitary. No, that is covered in saliva...No, I am not interested in the helicopter either. Stop that, you're going to get peanut butter on me! John, restrain it please!"

John had laughed and Sherlock had scowled and after perhaps eight minutes of playing "dinosaur police rescue helicopter," together, the boy had showed John his crayon drawings, which were not only done on the back of that very same will and testament, but also implicated several other very distinguished businessmen, depicting their surprisingly detailed stick figures sampling what looked to be Columbian cocaine.

_Dance._

Remember that charity dinner? The one Mycroft had tricked Sherlock into going to? The one that Sherlock had then talked John into going to? The one that was definitely not a date in any sense of the word? (even though John had to kick Sherlock under the table every time the detective had referred to him as "my plus-one"). That had been a sort of gala, which is what rich people call their adult versions of school dances, which implied that there would be dancing. Because it was a dance. Now don't start, because there was no way in hell that John would ever have let Sherlock ballroom it up with him in public, but there may or may not have been some people that John knew at this charity gala, some old army buddies and their wives, and much as John liked to embarrass Sherlock in private, nobody laughed at John Watson's flatmate except _John H. Watson_, god dammit.

So John had been forced to make sure (ahead of time) that Sherlock actually could dance, because looking the way he did there was always the off chance that someone would ask him, and always the off chance that he would agree for some unfathomable reason, and oh, if he couldn't dance, that would be a catastrophe indeed. Because we all know that the second one of John's army mates made a comment about "that weirdo" John would have had to punch them in the face. And John really didn't want to have to punch anyone in the face at Mycroft's gala. He really didn't.

"Are you sure this is absolutely necessary?"

"Yes. Shut up. Don't even look at me just move your hand - "

"If I can't look at you I'm not sure you'll like where I move it."

"I'm really not in the mood, Sherlock."

"...Is that so? I never would have guessed, considering that you proposed this whole dancing idea."

"Don't patronize me, just cooperate, will you?"

"Do I get to do the man's bit or the lady's bit?"

"Neither, don't worry about that. It's just a box step, this is not rocket science."

"Well, I invited you to the event, so I guess that makes me the gentleman."

"I am going to hurt you, so help me, now shut up and put your feet like so..."

"Kinky."

"Sherlock! This is not funny!"

"Yes it is."

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><p>How did this turn out so fluffy? I surprise myself sometimes. But that dialogue, people, that dialogue is one hilarious motherfucker. Speaking of which, I think "swearing" may be in the next installment, because Sweary!John wins at life.<p> 


	3. Hoovering, Swearing, and Sewing

This one is a bit short, but only because hoovering and swearing are sort of combined into one point, but sewing is particularly long. Here's a lesson: when my boyfriend is playing Skyrim and hogging up the TV, fanfiction will ensue, because watching someone play Skyrim is bloody boring.

Enjoy!

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><p><em>Hoovering.<em>

John Watson could hoover like a motherfucking champion, but god did he hate it. If there was one god damn fucking household task that he would have killed to never have to do again, that would be it. And maybe, just-bloody-maybe, if his ever-loving prat of a flatmate would stop putting explosive fucking substances in glass fucking containers at the very fucking _epicentre_ of the kitchen table, surrounded by a great bloody cavalcade of dozens of other _glass_ containers, which would all shatter spectacularly like a pointy, bleedy, glittery firework and cock up the whole fucking flat with shards of _fucking glass_, well, maybe then he wouldn't have to do so much bloody hoovering now, would he?

Likewise, he would not have to wear his goddamn shoes at all fucking times inside his own god damn flat for about two weeks, because the one bloody time he forgot, he got jabbed in the foot with one of those aforementioned bits of glass and had to look the skanky sod responsible for it right in his smarmy face for five minutes as he had extracted the shard with tweezers. And that had hurt like a motherfucker.

_Swearing._

See above. See also, "Jesus titty-fucking Christ and Gordon Bennett, Sherlock, you cock-sucking wanker!"

He had only used that once, and had apologised profusely afterward, but god damn, hydrochloric acid was serious fucking business.

_Sewing._

It was immediately after this entry to the list that John had been forced to sit back in his chair and purse his lips in irritation, because was it just him, or was this list looking, I dunno, sort of _domestic_? Cooking, ties, children, and now sewing? It was completely true, but damn...what was next, cleaning? Wait, hoovering was sort of cleaning, wasn't it? And he _was_ better at cleaning in general... No wonder people thought he and Sherlock were a couple, John was making it too easy, what with all this...wifey stuff. Was that sexist? Probably.

In John's defence, he had only ever sewn anything in the most masculine way that one could sew, that is, hand-stitching up things that were falling apart. It was perhaps one of the more practical things that he had learned in the army, because it saved a great deal of money and aggravation in the event of a popped button or a split seam, both of which he had repaired on his own clothing multiple times. Sherlock's solution to such problems (not that he seemed to have them often, in spite of his rough-and-tumble lifestyle, John figured that when you pay two hundred quid for a shirt, it had better keep all its buttons) had always been to leave it in the hands of a tailor, but after John had moved in, he had insisted on fixing any such problem himself. He suspected that in spite of his professed need for a flatmate, Sherlock had always had plenty of money, yet still, it was the principle of the thing ("They wanna charge eight pounds to sew your button back on? I can do that in literally fifteen seconds. For free.").

He had then found that he may have opened something of a can of worms, because unbeknownst to him, Sherlock kept a sort of collection of clothing he had been wearing when he sustained particularly grievous (Sherlock called them "memorable") injuries. After discovering that John frequently asked how the small rips and frays had come to be on his ordinary shirts, Sherlock had decided one afternoon to show John his catalogue of textile trophies. After finding that John was very fascinated indeed by the bloodstained garments, he had proceeded to regale him with a few particularly brilliant tales of the cases associated with the clothing and how he had come to be stabbed and crushed and bludgeoned and half-drowned and otherwise seriously wounded.

One story led to another, and before the evening was out, Sherlock had stripped off his shirt and was flaunting the more spectacular of his scars rather smugly for John to marvel at. The good doctor had been so fascinated as to prod at them with emotive wincing and hissing at their severity, and had asserted repeatedly that he could have stitched them up much better than Sherlock had done on his own.

"Jesus, Sherlock, you should have gone to a hospital, someone would have fixed you properly, I wish I'd been there," he examined a stab wound that had healed rather drawn, a still-pink burn, then the cobweb-like scars in the bend of his elbows form the bite of hundreds of needles. "I wish I'd been there."

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><p>P.S. I had to work really hard at British swearing, because British I am not, so if British you are and you find anything stupidly wrong about John's swearing, let me know and I'll fix it, because John needs to swear like a sweary Englishman, god dammit.<p> 


	4. Pranks, Drinking, and Drinking

AN: The theme tonight is intoxication (you will notice that "drinking" appears twice in the title) and somehow this has very nearly become its own full-length fanfiction. I couldn't help it, I was just having too much fun. It also reminds me that I owe some commenters a thank-you for their suggestions: Tsukinoblossom suggested hoovering, chugging a beer, and sewing (reincarnatedwitch also suggested sewing), so thank you both very much! Give me more, everyone!

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><p><em>Play practical jokes<em>

Every now and then, just rarely, John would get an impish little urge to play a prank on Sherlock. This was difficult, not only because Sherlock was far cleverer than John, but because Sherlock tended to put himself so near to danger at all times that John feared that altering anything he owned for the sake of humour would end up somehow actually placing him in harm's way. The lab (known in layman's terms as the kitchen) was almost entirely off-limits, because while it might _seem_ cute to replace a few seemingly innocuous vials with the ingredients for a smoke bomb, there was no telling how Sherlock might end up combining those solutions, under assumption that they were un-tampered-with, and with one foul move they could end up with a flat full of mustard gas, or worse, no flat at all.

The only other really good option would have been to booby trap Sherlock's bedroom somehow (fill it with balloons or something? Hadn't thought it through fully) but when Sherlock wasn't at home, his bedroom was always locked, and you will notice that "lock picking" is not on this list of things John Watson can do better than Sherlock, so the bedroom was out as well.

While it hadn't been particularly genius, John had finally managed to think of something that was (so he thought) harmless, easy, and funny: he had stirred a substantial spoonful of Marmite into Sherlock's Nutella (Sherlock hated Marmite with an un-English passion, but would eat anything with enough sugar) and pretended to be very busy about the kitchen one morning when Sherlock had finally decided that today was a Nutella day. The hazelnut smell had covered the yeasty smell well enough that Sherlock hadn't noticed, and the produced reaction had been truly priceless (if there was an award for grimacing, Sherlock would have won it) but after a brief and panicked suspicion of strychnine poisoning, he had demanded to know what the giggling John had done to his food.

He had assured Sherlock that had been harmless fun, and _that_, ladies and gentlemen, had been a huge, massive, colossal mistake, because if there was one thing that Sherlock was terrible at, it was knowing where to draw the line between harmless fun and criminally insane.

Sherlock's idea of an amusing retaliation had been to lace John's raspberry jam with 500 micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide (better known as LSD) which, if you had not been informed, is a very powerful psychedelic drug that produces six to twelve hours' worth of what is colloquially known as "some really fucked up shit, man."

John had spent all morning (luckily he had gone light on the jam that day) rolling on the floor and moaning that the sofa was going to eat itself because "it's so colourful Sherlock, it looks so delicious, it won't be able to help it, it's like jelly babies. They don't even taste like anything but sugar, but they're so bright! The sofa could eat so many jelly babies, all the jelly babies in the whole world, Sherlock! Oh my god, my arms...I can't find them! What's happening to me? Oh my god, I'm gonna die...the sofa, Sherlock, aaaaugh..."

Sherlock's characteristically delayed oh-shit alarm had kicked in just in time, because right as that trip had started to turn really, really bad, Sherlock had lifted the flailing John up off the floor and lay him on the sofa, sitting down with him to hold him around the waist so he couldn't escape, and as a solid press of culpability began to settle over him, he did the only thing he could think to do: he stroked John's sandy, gray-tinged hair awkwardly and sort of murmur-hummed soft reassurances until John calmed and eventually came back to himself.

That row had been spectacular, and Sherlock had begged forgiveness, because he agreed absolutely that it hadn't been as funny as he might have hoped.

_Chug a beer_

John had honestly never imagined that he would one day come to learn whether or not Sherlock could chug a pint, but in the topsy-turvy world that was his life at 221B, he was beginning to learn not to rule anything out. Ever.

As fortune would have it, Sherlock had burst from his bedroom one evening and announced that he had to "see a man about a handkerchief." John had immediately stopped what he was doing and stared, because he'd had a friend in the army who had used that particular phrase as a euphemism for wanking.

What Sherlock had meant was that he actually needed to see a man (a homeless man named Marty) at a pub about a handkerchief (an illicitly obtained piece of evidence in a case that may or may not have involved chloroform), and that he expected – as always – that John would trot along with him.

Which John – as always - did.

The major difference between this and most of their other outings was that this time, by an extraordinary coincidence, homeless Marty had chosen to meet his financier at the very same pub where an old army friend of John's had been celebrating a promotion with several other old army friends who all knew John in some capacity. By an unrelated but similarly extraordinary coincidence, the newly-promoted friend in question (Robert, was his name) had been the very same one to have made the "see a man about a handkerchief" joke something like eighteen years ago.

Sherlock (after procuring his handkerchief in exchange for a crisp £50) had insisted with his usual terseness that they leave immediately. What he had said was that there was a case on and they couldn't tarry, and what he had meant was that he was uncomfortable in this small, crowded room and slightly childishly jealous of all the attention John was paying to Robert and his blokes.

John had waved him off, and before he knew it, he'd agreed to a pint...or two. As Sherlock had leaned against the bar, scowling hard enough to shatter glass, John had started to feel rather chatty, and that's where the nonsense had started, because Robert - who was already considerably intoxicated - had insisted that John "Three Continents" Watson throw one back "like a real soldier" for old times' sake.

And – more to irritate Sherlock than anything else – John had obliged, emptying a third glass in a smooth eight seconds.

Having not eaten since lunch and having just unexpectedly consumed three wife-beaters in a relatively short period of time, what happened next was not especially clear, but he remembered it more or less as follows:

Sherlock had been very irritable. Someone had called Sherlock a ponce, which had turned him from irritable to vengeful, and he had – for reasons unknown – chosen to exonerate himself from being a ponce by accepting Robert's challenge that he beat John's eight seconds.

He had come in at a respectable-for-a-novice fourteen seconds, but John's record stood, and Sherlock – who hadn't eaten today at all - had insisted that he be given a second go. Because Sherlock was not accustomed to being publicly beaten at anything

_Hold the beer after chugging it._

It was with a slight throbbing in his head that John sat down the next day to jot down these last two points on his list (numbers 12 and 13, incidentally), because the beers had been far from the end of it last night, and while a bit of social lubricant served only to make John much more friendly and tractable, it had made Sherlock a rather embarrassing rat-arsed mess.

At first he had suffered very little lack of cognition, but had become phenomenally giggly and show-offy, submitting to John's pleading that he "do Rob and his mates," by which he meant, of course, that Sherlock should demonstrate his deducing trick (it's not a trick, John).

He had fired off Robert's age, marital status, income, bathing habits, the colour of his cat, the style of underwear he was wearing, who had gifted him his tie, and the shop where he had bought the sandwich he'd had for lunch.

The army blokes had all found this riotously amusing and – as army blokes are wont to do – had turned it into a drinking game. For every deduction that Sherlock got right, everyone had to take a drink. This included Sherlock.

And Sherlock was always right.

To make a very long story very short, they had put Sherlock under the table. Literally. Within half an hour Sherlock had gone from tipsy and overconfident to piss-drunk and sort of weepy. John had never realized that Sherlock was claustrophobic, but in retrospect it made perfect sense: hated the tube, hated parties, and hated pubs, and the way that the detective had dealt with this particular overwhelming moment of emotional weakness was to scoot surreptitiously beneath a table and refuse to emerge.

When John had attempted to fish him back out, Sherlock had grabbed him quite viciously (you wouldn't believe how strong he was) and hugged him like a particularly battered (and similarly drunk) teddy bear, and they had both sort of snuggled and giggled on that grotty floor beneath that table in that seedy pub for the better part of an hour, drawing a lot of bewildered looks from John's friends.

While John couldn't say it was one of his finer moments, he had ultimately seen them both safely home and had rubbed Sherlock's back sympathetically as he had been sick in the loo for most of the night.


	5. Pashto, Kittens, and Chopsticks

AN: Hey guys, guess what? XD I'm feeling Christmassy, so I'm writing a special Christmas edition of Anything You Can Do, which I will post sometime around the 20th. It's cute as hell, you'll love it.

Special thanks to pistachio gelato (the user, not the delicious dessert) for suggesting animals and chopsticks. The rest of you, WORK HARDER, because if I run out of ideas, you run out of entertainment.

And just for the record, I do in fact know what those little round crunchy thingies in stir fry are called (they're water chestnuts) but I feel like Sherlock probably doesn't.

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><p><em>Speak Pashto<em>

Pashto, as John had found need to explain on innumerable occasions, is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan. John does not, nor has he ever, spoken Pashto, except in the respect that he has memorized the translations of yes and no, as well as a few key sentences that a British Army Doctor might find useful. Those phrases are as follows: "where can I get beer?" "Where is the loo?" "I don't understand," "someone is injured," "I am lost," "I am British," "I am a doctor," and a phrase that he continued to believe meant "I disagree with what the American said," but which actually meant "how much for your woman?" The American who had translated that for him had delivered it with such stone-faced certainty that he had never bothered to look it up. Luckily, he had never had to use it, or he might have left Afghanistan with considerably more than a bullet in his shoulder.

Sherlock could fluently speak German and French as well as English, and had some limited functional knowledge of Spanish, Italian, and Russian, but he had absolutely no grasp whatsoever of even a single word in Pashto. The fact that Sherlock could, without a doubt, speak _more_ languages much _better_ than John could was not the point, the point was that on the rare occasion that he got a bit tipsy he would sometimes be overcome by the need to inform Sherlock that he was a lost British doctor who wanted beer…in Pashto. On the one occasion that he had also haltingly asked Sherlock how much his woman was, Sherlock had laughed, not because he had understood the doctor's mistake, but because to an untrained ear and coming from the mouth of a tipsy Brit, Pashto is an absurdly funny-sounding language.

_Animals_

John had first seen the cat outside Speedy's as he was arriving home from a late shift at the surgery. He had looked at it, and it had looked at him, and then, much to his surprise, it had promptly forgotten about the bit of discarded sandwich it had been sniffing to weave itself between his legs. Now, John was more of a dog person, but the reckless abandon with which that orange cat had lavished affection upon his ankles, purring like a jet engine, had turned even his soldierly insides a little mushy.

"Just until I find his owner, Sherlock," he had promised, "he's clearly domesticated. Look how friendly he is."

The cat, at the time, had been getting very "friendly" indeed with the laces of Sherlock's very expensive shoes as he tried in vain to hurry about the kitchen, covering any experiments that might be affected by cat hair. Sherlock had snapped simply "No!" and huffed irritably as he prodded the hateful thing with his foot. It did not relent. Nor did John.

"We should call him Winston," John had suggested on their fourth day with the cat, after a blog post, a few fliers, and a great deal of asking around had done nothing to produce its owner.

"Call it Mycroft," Sherlock had replied sourly as he shoved the poor thing yet again from the sofa. "It's more ginger, but just as fat, just as annoying, and just as unwelcome in my flat."

"_Our_ flat. And we are not calling the cat Mycroft."

Undaunted, Sherlock had refused to call the beastie anything other than "Cat Mycroft," and to his chagrin, John had found the habit rubbing off on him. Thus, Cat Mycroft it was until their sixth night, upon which, out of sheer pique and alarm, Sherlock had reverted to calling the cat "it," as in "John, for the love of god, get it off my bed! John it's disgusting!"

Cat Mycroft, as it turned out, had been neither male nor fat.

Cat Mycroft had been both female and pregnant.

As John would loudly defend later, he had never considered it important to "check the cat's fiddly bits," as he had assumed they wouldn't be keeping it, but when he was startled awake at three in the morning by a pounding on his door and a shout of "John, there are four sticky animals on my bed! How and why is this happening, and what can I expect you to do about it? John!" he very much wished he _had_ checked the cat's fiddly bits, because the last thing he needed was Sherlock having kittens, too.

A bleary but attentive John had followed the indignant detective back downstairs to figure out exactly what was going on and had been shocked to find that Sherlock was indeed correct. On his now-likely-ruined duvet there wriggled three damp, mewing kittens, all being tongue-bathed by their mother.

After blinking the shock from his eyes several times over, John had carefully gathered up the duvet – cats and all – and relocated it to the sitting room floor. As Sherlock looked on with his characteristic aloofness, John had fetched a hand towel and, gently lifting the tiny blind things, enveloped each one and fluffed it up a bit, fearing for the draft in the old building. He then procured some water and a can of tuna for Mummy Cat and, not being a veterinarian and not knowing what else to do, had simply plunked down on the floor and stared at them for a while in astonishment. To his surprise, Sherlock had eventually sat down beside him and looked on with dubious interest at the little creatures.

"What do we do with them?"

"I...I have no idea."

"Will you be buying me a new duvet?"

"Sherlock!"

Molly Hooper had adopted two of the kittens, naming them Peaches and Cream, over which Sherlock had groaned, Mrs. Hudson had taken the third, and Mrs. Turner next door had offered to look after Mummy Cat.

Though he never would have admitted it, especially to John, Sherlock had not particularly minded being awakened at odd hours by little wet noses or little sharp claws on various parts of his anatomy. Though John would never have admitted it, especially to Sherlock, he had rather enjoyed their little temporary family.

_Use chopsticks_

John admitted that this was conjecture. He had _never_ seen Sherlock use chopsticks, in spite of the fact that they ordered Chinese take-away far more often than would seem humanly feasible to a casual observer (and by some small miracle, neither of them ever got tired of it). This in itself was his justification for that assumption, considering how rarely Sherlock missed an opportunity to show off. If Sherlock was capable of using chopsticks, John was sure he would have witnessed it by now, and he hadn't.

When asked about it once (and only once) he had replied simply, "This is Britain, John, we are not Chinese," as he had attempted to spear one of those little round crunchy disk things rather futilely on his determined British fork.

John had raised his eyebrows as he deftly handled his own chopsticks and said "Oh. Right then," as a victorious smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.

As such, they had a drawer in the kitchen packed full of Sherlock's ignored take-away chopsticks and were eternally short on clean forks.


	6. All Things Christmas

Happy Christmas everyone! I know I said I would post this a few days ago, but Christmas is one of those things that really sneaks up on you if you're not looking. Anyway, I hope you enjoy all the cutesy cuteness!

Also, Sarah Sawyer is awesome, and no-one will ever convince me otherwise.

* * *

><p><em>Choose Christmas gifts<em>

There was never a man upon this earth harder to shop for than Sherlock Holmes. Regarding any given object, one never knew if he was going to be childishly enamoured with it or blatantly and unapologetically uninterested. It wasn't even necessarily a matter of what the gift was; his reaction depended just as much on his capricious mood as upon the actual object. Mycroft had figured this out decades ago, but it was new territory for John.

He was determined to get it right, no matter the cost (well, okay, maybe cost was a bit of a factor) and no matter the effort it took, because just this _one_ time, he wanted to prove to Sherlock that he could read him just as well as the detective could read John.

The thing is, in spite of having lived with the man for nearly a year, and in spite of being possibly more familiar with him than any other human being on the planet, John couldn't help but draw a complete blank regarding what to get him for Christmas. He never seemed to want for anything, except abstracts like the neighbours being quieter (the very definition of hypocrisy), the population in general being smarter (a lost cause on all counts), and Anderson being the victim rather than the forensic supervisor of the next murder they were called in for (bonus points for it being especially gory). None of these were things that John could deliver. Not without going to prison for the rest of his life, at least.

Mycroft's suggestions had been as follows: "Oh good lord, don't even bother. Whatever you get him he'll probably inadvertently incinerate anyway. He wouldn't even know it was Christmas in the first place if you hadn't insisted on putting a tree in the sitting room." John had sighed into the phone receiver and asked hopelessly if Sherlock had ever enjoyed one of Mycroft's gifts. "Yes, when he was eight, I gave him a ten-pound block of frozen carbon dioxide and a microscope, both of which he was immensely amused by until the card ice evaporated and he discovered that the microscope's magnification was not sufficient for pollen categorization."

He'd phoned Lestrade next, who had simply laughed dryly and said, "hell if I know. Get him a dead cat. Seems like he'd enjoy a box full of something dead on Christmas morning." John had been more frustrated than amused, so while he'd laughed obligingly, that had been the end of the conversation.

He had honestly been on the verge of phoning Sally Donovan (dear god, what was this coming to?) when Harry had given him a ring out of the blue and the conversation had turned to John's predicament.

"Get him a puppy. He's like a big kid, right? Every kid wants a puppy."

"I'm worried he'll kill it by accident."

"You could get him an already-dead puppy so he can dissect it."

"Harry!"

"Fine, so he's basically a 12-year-old, a genius, he likes technology, and he doesn't do anything with his free time except solve murders or sit around waiting for murders to happen so he can solve them."

"Basically."

"Yeah, you're screwed, baby brother."

"Oh, thanks."

"So...bringing your new husband home for Christmas? Mum will be disappointed in both of us now, it'll be fun. We can steal the good rum and get plastered in the basement like old times."

"Harry, we're not together! And I never got drunk in the basement on mum and dad's rum!"

"Didn't you? Oh well. I got drunk enough for the both of us."

Unbeknownst to Harry, her crass advice had actually turned out to be very helpful, because every blunt statement she had made about Sherlock had been precisely true (except the husband thing). Sherlock was a child. Sherlock liked technology. Sherlock liked mysteries and hated boredom.

He was taking a wild risk and he knew it, but it just seemed so...appropriate. When the inspiration had finally struck him he had gone out immediately and purchased the thing that had first popped into his head, before he lost his nerve.

_Snowball fights_

It had been childish, and he knew it, but had he cared? Nope.

He really should have thought it through better after the incident with the Marmite and the LSD, but when he had awakened two days before Christmas to find that a sparse, slushy coating of wet snow had covered London the night before, the temptation had simply been too great. John had looked from Sherlock's oblivious, supine form on the sofa – thoroughly absorbed in the news feed on his crackberry - to the thin, greyish blanket outside, then down at his watch. He had to be at work in twenty minutes.

Worth it.

Careful not to look too damningly eager, he had slipped on his shoes and scampered down the stairs to the front door.

The coating of snow was so thin and so damp that it took an extraordinary amount of effort to rally it into ball form. John had to make a sort of plough out of his hands and inch along the concrete in a very silly-looking crouch, made even sillier by the perplexed looks on the faces of passersby as they watched a coatless 40-year-old man go to extraordinary lengths to accumulate a snowball. By the time he had formed a sufficiently large and sufficiently snowball-shaped mass, his fingers and nose were bright pink with the cold and he was shivering slightly.

It had been perfect, absolutely perfect. When he heard John thundering back up the stairs, Sherlock had turned his head and opened his mouth to say something (something snide, no doubt), only to get a face full of cold, wet, grimy, 45-mph, London street-flavoured snowball, which splattered spectacularly to throw slush through his hair, down the front of his dressing gown, and all over the cushion he was leaning on.

John had trembled violently with stifled laughter and braced himself for the worst, because he honestly had no idea what Sherlock would do to him in retaliation.

What Sherlock had done was precisely this: he had slowly, indignantly wiped the snow from his eyes so as to glare more effective daggers in John's direction, then he had immediately resumed fiddling with his phone, before snarling "shouldn't you be at the surgery?"

John had to admit, he had been a little disappointed by that reaction, but he had shrugged, grabbed his jacket, and hurried off to work.

The moment he had stepped through the sliding glass door, he had been greeted by a familiar, snide, giggling, "You're late again, Doctor Watson," the tone of which he had known, as if by instinct, meant trouble.

"Sorry, Sarah, I – "

And there it was, snowball to the face. Not only his face, either, but all down the inside of his jacket.

John spluttered in shock as he tried to wipe the debris from his eyes, Sarah laughed unapologetically, covering her mouth with her hand.

"What the hell?" Was all he could manage.

"Your flatmate texted me," she explained raising an eyebrow, and taking a few steps closer "telling me that you would be here in exactly eleven minutes, and that if I hit you in the face with a snowball, he would give me fifty quid."

"Oh god, he's gotten to you, too?" John sighed. "I thought you were on my side."

"Oh, I am," she smiled, "I told him no. That one," she brushed a few ice ships from his hair, "was from me." He grinned disbelievingly and she planted a quick kiss on his cold, wet cheek. Then, when no-one was looking, gave his bum a squeeze for good measure.

Perhaps inappropriately, John's very next thought had been, _so I still won the snowball fight, then?_

_Subtlety_

John had stuck Sherlock's present under their rather unfortunate and rather sparsely adorned little plastic tree on Christmas eve and waited for Sherlock to notice it, which had taken an uncharacteristically long time. Apparently Sherlock avoided looking at the Christmas tree as often as possible, preferring to focus on things that better suited his taste. John had been nodding off in front of the telly when Sherlock had finally done a double-take as he crossed the room and demanded, "What is that?"

John had blinked. "Your Christmas gift."

Sherlock had looked from John to the festive parcel and back again with a level of trepidation that would have been better suited for something that could explode at any second. "You...got me a Christmas gift?"

"As though I wouldn't."

"Do I have to open it?"

"Yes, it's a gift, not Pandora's box."

"What is it?"

"I can't tell you, it's not fun that way."

Sherlock had scoffed at the word "fun."

"Just open it. It's Christmas in about twenty minutes anyway, so I won't make you suffer."

Sherlock's look had suggested that he was already suffering.

John had sighed and crossed the room, plucking the box from the floor and depositing it rather forcefully into Sherlock's mug-free hand. "It isn't brain surgery, just open it."

With equal parts efficiency and dread, Sherlock had stripped the box of its paper in one swift movement and stood staring blankly at its contents.

"What is it?"

"It's a DS, it's a video game thing, and I just got you that so you could play the game that's with it."

"_Professor Layton_..." Sherlock read off the cover.

"Yeah, it's a game where you solve mysteries, and that advances the plot, so you can solve the big mystery at the end. I figured it'd be sort of easy for you, but then, everything is."

Sherlock had stared at the box in silence, and John's confidence had begun to falter.

"I mean, I know it's...kind of for kids, I guess, but I couldn't legally give you _real_ casework to do in real life without...killing someone...which is bad."

Sherlock's eyes had scanned the packaging as though the fine print contained the secret of human existence. "John, this is - "

_Stupid? Childish? A terrible idea? Knew it._

"Brilliant."

John's chest had nearly burst with pride, but before he could bask in his glorious victory for more than a second, Sherlock had turned on his heel and retreated to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. John's brows had furrowed, but it wasn't until he heard a strange yelping sound that his mouth had actually fallen open and he had dared to take a few steps forward.

"Sherlock? What...what are you doing?"

The detective had emerged carrying something in a pillowcase, something that was wriggling and...making noise. "This is yours. Sorry, it doesn't lend itself well to wrapping."

Against his better judgment but partly out of sheer alarm, John had snatched the pillowcase from Sherlock's hand and pulled it open to look inside. What looked back at him was the wrinkly, caramel-coloured face of a tiny bulldog puppy, disoriented but apparently unharmed by its unusual method of containment.

"You got me a puppy...in a sack..._you_, of all people...got me a puppy?"

"Yes, from a man in Lambeth with a bit of an animal hoarding problem. Do you like it?"

"I..." Oh god, the thing was unbearably cute. Its little pink tongue poked amiably out of his scrunched face. "How could I not?" He reached down into the pillowcase to lift it up, meeting with squirms and yelps until he dropped the pillowcase and cradled it in the bend of his elbow.

"Just keep it clear of the experiments," Sherlock had sighed in a hollow show of pique, "and for god's sake, house train it."

John had given him a perplexed look before realising – a second too late – that there was a rather conspicuous damp spot on his jumper. The puppy looked up at him, the picture of sorrowful innocence.

"Happy Christmas, John."


End file.
